


Clouds

by tea_writes



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, Nonbinary Party Poison (Danger Days), Original Character(s), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:08:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28065255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_writes/pseuds/tea_writes
Summary: Tortured and brainwashed, the former Party Poison has no memory of the desert or their crew. They're one of the most up-and-coming students at Battery City University, destined to be a part of the BLI elite. But every day, the inner sense that something is wrong grows. Memories are surfacing in Poison’s mind, dangerous ones that could get them killed if BLI finds out (if they’re even real in the first place). And then a familiar newcomer arrives on campus and breaks Poison’s mind wide open.
Relationships: Fun Ghoul/Party Poison (Danger Days), Jet Star/Kobra Kid (Danger Days)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Clouds

When Fun Ghoul came to, it took him a minute to remember what had happened. His vision swam for a few seconds, and his head hurt. The feeling was familiar, Ghoul knew he must have been stunned by a ray gun. He slowly sat up and brushed sand off his jacket. He had been in a clap, he remembered, and then a Scarecrow had shown up, which didn’t make any sense because they always shot to kill.

  
A few feet away from him, Jet Star groaned and started to stir. Ghoul didn’t see Party Poison or Kobra Kid, so they must have been behind something. He did a quick internal scan, checking for wounds. His palms were scratched up from landing on the sand, and his left arm hurt where he must have hit the ground. The ray gun had gotten him on the leg, and some blood had soaked through his pants. It was a good thing he was wearing dark jeans, the last time Party got hit in the leg the blood had badly stained their white jeans and they were bitching about it for weeks. Eventually, Ghoul was able to convince them to get some new pants instead of futility washing them again, but much to his annoyance, Party bought another pair of white jeans.

  
Ghoul grabbed his ray gun from where he had dropped it, but the movement sent shooting pains up and down his arm. He groaned and leaned back against the Trans Am. Jet Star, who was now fully awake, crawled over, a concerned look on his face. Ghoul could tell it was hurting him, but Jet always took care of others before he took care of himself. He had tried to get him to stop, but after years Ghoul knew it was a losing battle.

  
Jet took a look at his arm and leg. The ray gun wound wasn’t too bad, there wasn’t a lot of bleeding and the burn was mild. His arm was another story. “It’s sprained,” Jet said while he was wrapping it up. Ghoul groaned. He had sprained limbs before and it was both painful and annoying. He hated just sitting there while the others were able to go out and be useful.  
After Jet was done dealing with Fun Ghoul’s injuries, he looked around for the others.

  
By then Ghoul was sort of able to stand, so he pulled himself up, still leaning on the car. There was no sign of Party Poison or Kobra Kid. He sank back down, defeated. He couldn’t understand why they would just leave. The Fab Four were a family, and they didn’t leave anyone behind. They didn’t even have anywhere to go, the car was still there and it was hours on foot to the nearest settlement. A sinking feeling took hold in Ghoul’s gut. They shouldn’t even have been able to stand, much less walk. There was no way they’d left. Something was very wrong.

  
With nobody else’s injuries to tend, Jet Star was starting to flag. He was worse off than Ghoul, from what he could tell he had been shot twice and landed on asphalt instead of sand, scraping a lot of his exposed skin and ripping a hole in the knee of his jeans. Being stunned also affected Jet more than most people, he always felt worse and sometimes he would have headaches on and off all day.

  
“Jet?” Ghoul groaned. “Where’s Poison and Kobra?” He knew there was no way Jet would know, but somewhere in the back of his mind he hoped that Jet might know something he didn’t, somehow. They couldn’t be gone. They just couldn’t. Jet Star groaned and rubbed his temples.

  
Ghoul was starting to panic. He couldn’t compartmentalize his feelings like Jet could, he knew Jet needed help, but two of his crew were gone. He didn’t know where they were, or what was happening to them, or, he realized with a sinking feeling, if they were even alive. That was the thought that brought him back to the present. He couldn’t help Party and Kobra right now, but he needed to help Jet, and once he did they could think about how to help the others. Plus, Ghoul could tell he was starting to spiral, and he was no help to anyone if he got caught up in his negative thoughts.

  
He reached for Jet Star’s pack, and started to assess his injuries. It was hard to do things one-handed, and Jet was a much better medic than him, but Ghoul had some basic skills. Live in the desert for long enough, you pick up how to treat a ray gun wound. Plus, Jet would chime in whenever he did something wrong, which was a lot. Jet Star wasn’t known for being a chatterbox, but he usually wasn’t this quiet. Ghoul figured he was worrying about the others. Once he dealt with his injuries, Ghoul was able to walk, and he helped Jet into the car.

  
They’d been heading to Zone 4, but it was pretty clear they needed to go back home. Jet was still unusually quiet, so Ghoul’s mind started to wander as he drove. It was pretty clear Poison and Kobra had been taken, and he figured it was probably to the city. He had no idea why, other than that they were part of the Fab Four and they were wanted criminals, but that didn’t explain why Ghoul and Jet hadn’t also been taken. Ghoul knew they were both city-born, although he knew next to nothing about their life before they ran away. It didn’t matter, whoever they were in the city, they weren’t the same people anymore. Probably, something happened back when they lived there that caused this.

  
Obviously, Ghoul was going to rescue them. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do it right away. He and Jet needed time to plan. They couldn’t go in guns blazing, they would probably need to do some kind of stealth mission. They would need to know where Party and Kobra were being held. Also, Ghoul needed to let his arm heal, he couldn’t sneak into the city in less than fighting shape. They had eyes in the city, of course, plenty of killjoys who could carry out the mission while he was healing up, but he was loath to trust the rescue mission to anyone else.

  
Ghoul pounded the dashboard in frustration. He couldn’t believe he had let two of his own get captured. This fucking sucked.

When they got back to the diner, Ghoul wasted no time in sending a transmission asking which killjoys were currently in the city. He didn’t want anyone he didn’t trust knowing that Poison and Kobra got taken. He didn’t have to wait long for a response. Carbon Crash, a zonerunner he was familiar with, told him there was no easy way to get messages in and out of the city. Transmitters couldn’t even send messages farther than a zone away. Ghoul groaned. In his frenzied state, he had completely forgotten about that.

  
When Jet Star reminded him his arm would take at least 3 weeks to heal, Ghoul almost threw the transmitter. They didn’t have that kind of time, anything could be happening to the others. Enough time had passed since the clap that they were probably already in the city. Jet took the transmitter so he could ask Carbon Crash some questions, and told Ghoul to go calm down and rest his arm.

  
Fun Ghoul hated not having anything to do. When he was alone with his thoughts, his mind wandered, often to places he didn’t like. He went outside and threw some rocks, hoping to take his anger out on something, but that required too little brainpower to occupy him. Ghoul tried throwing rocks and then shooting them midair, but that was almost impossible to do when he had to both throw and shoot with the same hand.

  
He had never been in the city. Ghoul had grown up in the desert. Although he’d always been curious, he had heard nasty things from killjoys who had to go inside the walls. Most city-borns didn’t like to talk about it, but zonerunners tended to be a lot more forthcoming. Ghoul had never had a good reason to go into the city, and he didn’t want to. To tell the truth, it scared him. Now, though, he would leave the desert a thousand times if it meant he could get his friends back. They were part of his crew, his family, they were like siblings to him.

  
Eventually, Jet Star came outside. He’d talked to Carbon Crash, and they’d figured out a rudimentary plan. Carbon was going back to the city soon, and while they were there they could connect with city-dwelling allies and figure out where Poison and Kobra were being held. Ghoul was apprehensive about working with someone he didn’t know very well, but Jet vouched for them. He had known Carbon Crash for a while, and he assured Ghoul that they could trust them. Ghoul didn’t like it, but he had to admit it was the best plan they had.

  
For two agonizing weeks, Fun Ghoul and Jet Star waited for word from Carbon. Finally, they received a transmission that Carbon was back in range and headed their way. Jet had been talking to the crew Carbon usually ran with when they were in the desert, and believed they could be valuable allies. Ghoul really didn’t want to get strangers involved, but one of them was a skilled hacker, which were few and far between in the zones. Normally Kobra hacked for the Fab Four, and Ghoul had been hoping he would be able to get a transmission out, but Carbon’s transmission confirmed that they weren’t able to make contact with either Kobra or Poison. They wouldn’t say much more, in case the message got intercepted, but they were able to locate them, and they wanted to meet up to tell Jet and Ghoul exactly what they found out.

  
Fun Ghoul hadn’t been waiting outside the diner long when Carbon Crash rolled up on their bike. When they got off the bike and came over, they had a dark look on their face. A hundred horrible possibilities ran through Ghoul’s mind. Jet invited them inside, and they all sat down in a booth.

  
Ghoul simultaneously didn't want to know and needed to know what Carbon found. When they paused to guzzle a water bottle, he wanted to scream. Finally, they spoke.

  
“They’re alive and we found them.” Ghoul felt like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders, but Carbon wasn’t done. “They’re being held at BL headquarters.”

  
Jet interrupted them. “Are they safe?”

  
“Relatively, yeah. To the best of my knowledge, BLI is planning on keeping them alive. But…” Carbon took a moment to gather themself. “We think they’re being brainwashed.”

  
Ghoul felt the blood drain from his face. All of the terrifying possibilities he had considered over the last two weeks, and this had never even crossed his mind. This was bad. This was worse than even his worst nightmares. He was a thousand feet away. His hands shook.

  
“Brainwashed? Like, how?” Jet asked. The expression on his face was unreadable.

  
Carbon sighed a little. “From what we could find, their memories are being replaced with fake ones. They’ll be doing ‘therapy’ to make sure the fake memories stick and that they think they’re real.” Their tone was even and their face was cagey, but their hands were angrily deconstructing a napkin.

  
This wasn't real. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. All they’d gone through together, everything they had, gone forever, to be replaced with who knows what. BLI was inside his friends’ heads, ruining them. Ghoul felt a lump in his throat.

  
“It gets worse,” Carbon continued, their voice breaking. The napkin in their hands had nearly been reduced to dust, but they were still going at it. Jet Star’s face was frozen between shock and horror. “If the ‘therapy’ doesn’t work, if Party Poison and Kobra Kid can’t lose the memories, they might be tortured.” Tears were silently streaming down their face, their facade of calm completely broken.

  
Ghoul was rooted to the spot. He couldn’t move. This wasn’t happening. Jet Star ran to the back room, and Ghoul could make out a sob before he slammed the door. Distantly, he was aware of Carbon apologizing, their voice barely above a whisper. Ghoul wanted to strangle them. They didn’t know Poison, they didn’t know what they meant to him, they couldn’t possibly be feeling the same way he was.

  
Fun Ghoul could feel his feet moving, taking him out the door. He walked around to the back of the diner and sat down in his chair. Normally, going outside and looking up at the stars helped him feel better, or at least take his mind off things, but tonight all he felt was the crushing emptiness of half his crew missing, the empty chairs next to him. The sky only reminded him of how alone he was. His face was wet.

  
He’d spent countless nights out here with the rest of the four, or sometimes just Poison. They liked to work on their art projects out here, and Ghoul would always sit out here and talk to them until they told him to go back inside because he was being distracting. Poison had left a project out here the day they got taken, a huge canvas that was longer than they were tall, that was going to be hung up in the diner. Ghoul had left it outside for a day, when it was lying there half finished he could almost pretend they had just stepped away for a break, and they would be back any minute. Eventually, he took it in, when he realized it was about to rain. It didn’t look the same out here without a work in progress and Poison’s art supplies scattered everywhere.

  
In the distance, Fun Ghoul heard Carbon’s bike leaving. He realized that he was feeling cold, and he should probably go inside. In the back room of the diner, Jet Star had already fallen asleep, curled up on Kobra Kid’s bedroll. Ghoul didn’t feel tired, but when he sat down on his bedroll he fell asleep almost immediately. His dreams were plagued by horrible things he couldn’t quite remember, and when he woke up he didn’t feel rested at all.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, so advice and constructive criticism are welcome. Sorry it took so long to fix the formatting issues. Chapter 2 is taking me longer than I expected, but I have a break from school soon so I'm hoping to get it done then. Follow my tumblr that-tea-fucker for updates!


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